[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote My immediate intuition was that while something like DSV+Plurality would still result in two parties being dominant, *which* two parties those were might be more subject to fluctuation, than with standard plurality.
Part of the problem with the two-party system (as I see it) is that social inertia may keep one party in power long after it "should" have been replaced by some popular third-party. I think there's some argument to be made that the USA should currently have a two-party duopoly consisting of Greens/Republicans or Democrats/Libertarians (or even Greens/Libertarians.) -------------------------------------- It's not the exact vote-counting method that engenders and sustains the two-party system in the US federal government - not much would change even if every state switched to (pick your favorite plurality replacement) as long as the "party in power" controls how elections are conducted. The only "national" election is that for president, and the president is not elected by popular vote, but by "electors" that the voters elect by whatever method. The egregious "errors" that the electoral college system can lead to are not due to using plurality to select the winner in any particular elector election (though there certainly might be better ways to select them). The real problem is that 48 of the 50 states have decided that electors run as a "slate" with a "winner take all" result. Two states (I forget which two) do NOT do this. Instead, since the electoral college representatives of the states represent their 2 senators + 1 * (number of representatives in the house) they elect one elector for each House district and only the two "statewide" positions are given to the winner of the popular statewide vote. Whether the slate of delegates is determined by a statewide "all-or-none" or a proportional system with electors selected by district is entirely up to the individual states. The true "electoral reform" movements should be directing their energy to have states adopt the more representative version of the current electoral college. By this November I strongly suspect that the voters in the states with the largest number of "winner take all" procedures will be so sick of the two ad campaigns that they'd quickly vote for a STATE constitutional amendment to move electoral college delegate selection to the district level. That will not change the duopoly system at all, since the party in power will still get to draw the districts, but it would make the whole system more democratic and less likely to make the US look like a third-world country that can't hold a fair election. ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
